arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Ben Fairbairn.
A Beauville group acts freely on the product of two compact Riemann surfaces and faithfully on each one of them. In this paper, we consider higher products and present {\it{generalised Beauville groups}}: for $d \geq 2$, $d$ is the minimal value for which the same action can be defined on the product of $d$ compact Riemann surfaces.
We discuss Beauville groups whose corresponding Beauville surfaces are either always strongly real or never strongly real producing several infinite families of examples.
We prove that there exist infinitely many a non-abelian strongly real Beauville $p$-group for every prime $p$. Previously only finitely many in the case $p=2$ have been constructed.
We generalize earlier work of Fuertes and González-Diez as well as earlier work of Bauer, Catanese and Grunewald to Coxeter groups in general by classifying which of these are strongly real Beauville groups. As a consequence of this we determine which of these groups are Beauville groups. We also show that none of these groups are mixed Beaville groups as well as proving that no Coxeter group is a mixable Beauville group.
A strongly real Beauville group is a Beauville group that defines a real Beauville surface. Here we discuss efforts to find examples of these groups, emphasising on the one extreme finite simple groups and on the other abelian and nilpotent groups. We will also discuss the case of characteristically simple groups and almost simple groups. \emph{En route} we shall discuss several questions, open problems and conjectures as well as giving several new examples of infinite families of strongly real Beauville groups.
Beauville surfaces are a class of complex surfaces defined by letting a finite group $G$ act on a product of Riemann surfaces. These surfaces possess many attractive geometric properties several of which are dictated by properties of the group $G$. In this survey we discuss the groups that may be used in this way. \emph{En route} we discuss several open problems, questions and conjectures.
We generalise a construction of mixed Beauville groups first given by Bauer, Catanese and Grunewald. We go on to give several examples of infinite families of characteristically simple groups that satisfy the hypotheses of our theorem and thus provide a wealth of new examples of mixed Beauville groups.
Memoryless computation is a new technique to compute any function of a set of registers by updating one register at a time while using no memory. Its aim is to emulate how computations are performed in modern cores, since they typically involve updates of single registers. The memoryless computation model can be fully expressed in terms of transformation semigroups, or in the case of bijective functions, permutation groups. In this paper, we consider how efficiently permutations can be computed without memory. We determine the minimum number of basic updates required to compute any permutation, or any even permutation. The small number of required instructions shows that very small instruction sets could be encoded on cores to perform memoryless computation. We then start looking at a possible compromise between the size of the instruction set and the length of the resulting programs. We consider updates only involving a limited number of registers. In particular, we show that binary instructions are not enough to compute all permutations without memory when the alphabet size is even. These results, though expressed as properties of special generating sets of the symmetric or alternating groups, provide guidelines on the implementation of memoryless computation.
Memoryless computation is a novel means of computing any function of a set of registers by updating one register at a time while using no memory. We aim to emulate how computations are performed on modern cores, since they typically involve updates of single registers. The computation model of memoryless computation can be fully expressed in terms of transformation semigroups, or in the case of bijective functions, permutation groups. In this paper, we view registers as elements of a finite field and we compute linear permutations without memory. We first determine the maximum complexity of a linear function when only linear instructions are allowed. We also determine which linear functions are hardest to compute when the field in question is the binary field and the number of registers is even. Secondly, we investigate some matrix groups, thus showing that the special linear group is internally computable but not fast. Thirdly, we determine the smallest set of instructions required to generate the special and general linear groups. These results are important for memoryless computation, for they show that linear functions can be computed very fast or that very few instructions are needed to compute any linear function. They thus indicate new advantages of using memoryless computation.
We examine which $p$-groups of order $\le p^6$ are Beauville. We completely classify them for groups of order $\le p^4$. We also show that the proportion of 2-generated groups of order $p^5$ which are Beauville tends to 1 as $p$ tends to infinity; this is not true, however, for groups of order $p^6$. For each prime $p$ we determine the smallest non-abelian Beauville $p$-group.
Let G be a group. We say that G has spread r if for any set of distinct elements {x1,..., xr}\subset G there exists an element y\in G with the property that =G for every 0<i<r+1. Few bounds on the spread of finite simple groups are known. In this paper we present improved upper bounds for the spread of many of the sporadic simple groups, in some cases improving on the best known upper bound by several orders of magnitude.
We apply the techniques of symmetric generation to establish the standard presentations of the finite simply laced irreducible finite Coxeter groups, that is the Coxeter groups of types An, Dn and En, and show that these are naturally arrived at purely through consideration of certain natural actions of symmetric groups. We go on to use these techniques to provide explicit representations of these groups.
We first show that every quasisimple sporadic group possesses an unmixed strongly real Beauville structure aside from the Mathieu groups M11 and M23 (and possibly 2B and M). We go on to show that no almost simple sporadic group possesses a mixed Beauville structure. We then go on to use the exceptional nature of the alternating group A6 to give a strongly real Beauville structure for this group explicitly correcting an earlier error of Fuertes and Gonzalez-Diez. In doing so we complete the classification of alternating groups that possess strongly real Beauville structures. We conclude by discussing mixed Beauville structures of the groups A6:2 and A6:2^2.
We develop theorems which produce a multitude of hyperbolic triples for the finite classical groups. We apply these theorems to prove that every quasisimple group except Alt(5) and SL_2(5) is a Beauville group. In particular, we settle a conjecture of Bauer, Catanese and Grunewald which asserts that all non-abelian finite simple groups except for the alternating group $\Alt(5)$ are Beauville groups.
We show that if {x1,...,x8064} is a set of distinct non-trivial elements of the sporadic simple Mathieu group M23 then there exists an element y such that {y,x_i} generates the whole group for every 0<i<8065 and that no larger set of distinct elements of M23 has this property.
Many groups possess highly symmetric generating sets that are naturally endowed with an underlying combinatorial structure. Such generating sets can prove to be extremely useful both theoretically in providing new existence proofs for groups and practically by providing succinct means of representing group elements. We give a survey of results obtained in the study of these symmetric generating sets. In keeping with earlier surveys on this matter, we emphasize the sporadic simple groups. ADDENDUM: This is an updated version of a survey article originally accepted for inclusion in the proceedings of the 2009 `Groups St Andrews' conference. Since the article was accepted the author has become aware of other recent work in the subject that we incorporate to provide an updated version here (the most notable addition being the contents of Section 3.4.)
Let G be a group. We say that G has spread r if for any set of distinct non-trivial elements {x1,...,xr}\subset G there exists an element y\in G with the property that = G for every 1 0<i<r+1. The group G has exact spread r if it has spread r but not r + 1. The case where G is a finite simple group is particularly interesting since it is known that in this case the spread is at least 2. The precise value of the exact spread of a simple group is known in very few cases. Here we determine the precise value of the exact spread in the smallest sporadic group for which this is still unknown, the Mathieu group M12.
We provide involutory symmetric generating sets of finitely generated Coxeter groups, fulfilling a suitable finiteness condition, which in particular is fulfilled in the finite, affine and compact hyperbolic cases.